The fighting had moved to the front of the square where the shadows still lingered.
He saw Ghrasia fighting a man in a dark cloak, she and two others. There were four Oras behind them.
Ahkio stepped into the fight. The shadow still moved fast, even with the chains of air the four Oras wove. Ahkio moved into old sword forms, forms he had not practiced in years, since he refused to take up a weapon with Nasaka. The shadow’s weapon curved over his head, then whirled to block a strike from Ghrasia. Ahkio remembered the man in the blazing council house.
Ahkio swung for his legs.
It was not a clean strike. The man twisted around to try and catch Ahkio across the chest, but Ahkio had hamstringed his left leg.
The shadow faltered.
Ghrasia darted forward.
The man parried.
Ahkio swung again.
The shadow could not hold them both any longer.
Ghrasia took him with a solid thrust through the chest. Ahkio cut off his head. Even as Ahkio kicked the head away from the torso, Ghrasia was already moving, limping toward the last stir of figures.
Ahkio followed her. They approached in time to see a swordsman land a blow to the neck of the shadow. The blow was enough to encourage the four militia who fought. They poured in over the fallen shadow, hacking with swords, screaming curses.
Ahkio pivoted and surveyed the square. No shadows. Nothing.
He felt a hand on his arm, and looked down.
“Kai,” she said. Ghrasia said. She stood next to him, covered in blood and dark ooze. Her hair was plastered to her forehead.
More Oras and militia joined them in the square.
“How many?” Ahkio said.
“We’ve counted six,” Ghrasia said.
“Including the one Caisa and I killed?”
“Seven,” Ghrasia said. “Our strategy for flushing them out worked. A little too well, perhaps.”
“How many of us dead? What was the cost, Ghrasia?”
“It’s too soon to know,” Ghrasia said, “but… fifty, maybe more? Most of the Raona militia, and many of my own. And Oras…”
Ahkio stared at the sword in his hand.
46.
“We have one shot at this,” Zezili said, “so don’t fuck it up.” Looking at the filthy, scar-faced girl next to her, Zezili suspected all the girl ever did was fuck up.
“I’m going down there,” Lilia said.
“I’d like you to burn up that army as much as anyone,” Zezili said, “but they’ve got omajistas down there, and gifted ranks. You see those flags there?” She pointed to a collection of red flags painted in blue Dhai characters. “Those are rallying flags for different troops. You talk like a temple Dhai, so start thinking like one. What do those symbols mean?”
“Para, Sina, Tira, Oma…” Lilia said. “Tira, there are hundreds of those flags. All those people can’t be gifted.”
“Why do you think they’re winning?” Zezili said. She pulled off her helm. It was embossed with the Eye of Rhea. So was her sword and the collar of her tunic. Looking like one of Monshara’s people here wouldn’t go well. “There are some clothes in that tower,” Zezili said. “Not armor, but red skirts and things, a lot like what your militia wears. We’ll wait for dark and head down there. If they ask who we’re looking for, we just say we’re running a message to the Kai from Monshara. You understand?”
Lilia gazed down at the army. “You think the Kai is down there?”
“I don’t give a toss for the Kai,” Zezili said. “We’re after the mirror. It took them a decade to build it. If we destroy it, it’ll take a decade more to replace it.”
“They won’t need it,” Lilia said. “Oma will be in the sky soon.”
Zezili grunted. “Bunch of fucking fatalists, you Dhai. Suck up your petty shit and do something with all that talent, before you burn out.” She marched away from the girl, back to the tower.
She went upstairs to the dusty trunk she’d found in what looked like a pillaged armory. She began to pull off her armor. She wondered if it was something about the Dhai people that just made them mealy-mouthed little good-for-nothings. Why did she have to pull them all around by the nose? “A few years,” she muttered aloud. “That’s a few more than we’ve got now, isn’t it?”
She shook out a long red tunic and pulled it on. The skirt was bulky, and a little short, but it would do. She found a leather belt embossed with the Dhai characters for all four satellites, and pulled it on. There was another outfit in there, far too big for the girl, but if she ripped up the tunic and just put a belt on her, they might be able to pass for a while. She found no sword in the trunk, or anywhere else in the ransacked room. All she could wrestle up was a broken javelin and what looked like some kind of busted crossbow. But she did find a long coat, perfect for hiding the sword strapped to her back. She drew her belt across her chest and re-hung her sheath. As she finished up, she heard footsteps on the stairs, and tensed until she saw it was just the dajian girl.
“I have a tunic here for you,” Zezili said. She threw it to the girl’s feet.
The girl stared at her.
“What?” Zezili said.
“You have one advantage, at least,” Lilia said.
“What’s that?”
“You look more Dhai than I do.”
After the suns went down, Lilia marched toward the camp with Zezili. They followed a beaten path down to the encampment. Lilia had slept several hours back in the tower, the dead sleep of the sick or exhausted, and woke feeling wrung out. She vomited out a high window. They had no water, and her mouth was dry and sticky.
“Could you stop if we see water?” Lilia asked.
“No time for that.”
She remembered Larn telling her that the priests she met within the camp often paid her in clear water. “Are your priests over here?” she asked. “The ones who pay in water? We could ask them.”
Zezili turned around. “My… what?”
“Priests?” Lilia said, wondering if she got the word wrong. “Priestesses?”
Zezili laughed. “Oh, you mean Seekers. Dajians are always calling them priests.”
“What are Seekers?”
Zezili began walking again. “Dorinah’s gifted.”
“But,” Lilia said. “Why would they be in a camp?”
“A camp?” Zezili stopped again. “Tulana’s in a dajian camp?”
“Who? I don’t know, but –”
“Should have figured,” Zezili said. “It’s the one place we wouldn’t look.”
“Why were you looking?”
Zezili shook her head. “Empress is killing our own gifted. For the Tai Mora. The people on this side. They ran off some time ago. Should have figured they’d hide in a camp.”
“That’s mad.”
“It is,” Zezili said. “Shit. Good thing I didn’t slaughter you after all.”
“You would have fought your own gifted,” Lilia said.
“Becoming a thing, isn’t it? Killing ourselves.”
As they came down into the military camp, Lilia tensed. The mass of the army up close was far more overwhelming than from afar. Massive, stinking bears were camped in large rings outside the periphery of the camp. A few blue-clad kennel girls led tall white dogs past them. Lilia saw runners and pages. And the troops… they were too many, and too different, for Lilia to comprehend. She expected they would all be Dhai, but the armor, the hair, the clothing, and the languages – the languages! – were all foreign. She saw every type of face in every shade of brown – from pinkish tan to the deepest violet black, and every type of hair in every type of color, from blond to red to white to black; coiled and curled, straightened and dreadlocked. What confounded her even more was that the groups were mixed. People who bore little resemblance to one another wore uniforms that clearly marked them as units. Lilia looked at every standard they passed, noting how many were parajistas, sinajistas, tirajistas… Finding the omajistas was much easier. She could stil
l see the misty trails leading off from the mirror. As she followed those trails, she saw they wended back to groups congregated around omajista flags. Whatever her mother had made, it still needed a lot of power to work.
Ahead of her, Zezili’s right hand kept twitching. They had expected a challenge, a fight. But blending into this colorful group proved to be easier than Lilia imagined. In fact, as they passed people tended to glance at them once, lower their eyes, and step away. It took Lilia a long time to realize it was because they looked like Dhai.
Lilia trotted forward to catch up to Zezili. She opened her mouth to talk in Dorinah because she didn’t want anyone knowing that they said. Then she realized that might be worse.
Instead, she spoke very low in Dhai, “They will kill us after we break it.”
“I expect so,” Zezili said. “But you were willing to burn up my legion to save a few hundred sniveling dajians. I figured killing yourself to save twenty thousand or so would be fine by you.”
“But you’ll die too,” Lilia said.
“I like living,” Zezili said, “but I don’t fancy living as a slave.”
“That’s very strange coming from you.”
Zezili grunted.
As they got closer to the mirror, the troops thinned out. Finally, they reached a barrier of bone-white pillars that jutted up from the charred ground. It completely encircled the mirror. This close, Lilia could see through to the other side. The sky wasn’t as dark there. She saw the moons’ light glinting across a broad field of amber-colored grass. In the far distance, Lilia saw the winking lights of a house or hold of some type, obscured by a stand of spiky trees.
“Do you recognize that place?” Lilia asked.
Zezili shook her head. “Thought you might.”
“No.”
“Well,” Zezili said, “It’s your turn now.”
“To do what?”
“To break it.”
Lilia gazed up and up, to the top of the mirror where the figure she had first spied still writhed. The body, she saw now, was fused with the edge of the mirror, embedded into it with braided bands of Oma’s breath. She gagged, filled with a horror so powerful it left her breathless, just like the day she watched her village burn.
They had not killed her mother. Oh no. They’d put her to work for them.
“I need to get up there,” Lilia said.
“Zezili pointed to the edge of the mirror. “See that braided silver work, there? It’s a lattice. You can climb it.”
“Climb?”
“Climb,” Zezili said. “Or are you afraid of heights?”
Lilia looked at her twisted left hand. She still couldn’t close the fingers all the way.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Lilia started, and turned. Zezili’s reaction was more casual. She continued looking at the mirror for another breath.
A solid, swarthy woman wearing a green tunic and long skirt stood a few feet behind them. When Lilia turned, she swaggered forward. “I still admire what you all did here,” the woman said in accented Dhai.
Lilia tried to work some spit into her mouth.
“You’re welcome,” Zezili said. She crossed her arms. “You need something?”
“Funny accent,” the woman said. “What is it?”
“Southern,” Zezili said, so smoothly that Lilia wondered just how often she lied.
The woman laughed. “It’s been a long time since I went below the Granian line,” she said. “But I suppose soon we’ll all sound foreign, there.” She gestured to the mirror.
“Let’s get a drink,” Zezili said. “Tell me about your travels below the Granian line. My girl here wanted a few minutes alone to stare at it again. Finds it mesmerizing. I’m tired of it, myself.”
“Your girl?” the woman said. “Is she your daughter or your apprentice?”
“A bit of both,” Zezili said. She reached out her arm, and Lilia almost shouted at her not to touch the woman without asking. But as she wrapped her arm around the woman, the woman only smiled more broadly.
“Lead on,” Zezili said. She glanced back at Lilia, “and you get to work.”
Lilia watched the two walk off toward the green flag of a unit of tirajistas. Then she glanced back at the mirror. Up. The figure embedded with it. There was some puzzle here she needed to figure out, but she wasn’t seeing it. She placed her hand on one of the pillars. She could see no red mist here, nothing manipulated by Oma. She tried to put her hand between the pillar and found a solid wall of air, though. It was a parajista-built barrier. So at least two sorts of magic users would have to work together to gain access.
Lilia began to walk slowly around the mirror. As she passed to the other side, she saw that the reverse face was a flat, solid surface, just like the back of any mirror. She spent a few minutes walking back and forth, taking in the impossible vista visible on one side and the flat pane on the other. She kept walking, trying to keep her gaze on her feet at least as much as on the mirror. A few people at nearby camps stared at her, and she knew that if she made more than one revolution, someone was going to question her. She didn’t have much time.
She arrived back at the front of the mirror. Gazed again at the withered figure atop it. Maybe her mother was alive, but from the look of what they’d done to her, it wasn’t any kind of life Lilia would recognize. She studied the long streams of red haze braiding up the edges of the mirror. They radiated toward the middle of the mirror.
Zezili and Isoail, her shadow-mother, had thought she could unravel this because she was the daughter of the woman who built it. But why did that matter? What did she have or know that no one else did?
Lilia gazed at her mother’s body. Then she stared down at her wrist.
She remembered Taigan pushing her from the edge of the cliff, telling her to fly.
The trefoil.
Litanies and songs focused power, but it was patterns that built objects of power. Specific patterns, writ large. Like the trefoil pattern her mother had seared into her skin. It wasn’t just a ward of protection. It was a ward that told her how to build things.
Lilia stared more closely at the braids of mist. She concentrated on one of the songs Taigan had taught her, the one for perceiving objects created by power. Then she took a deep breath, and focused.
Nothing happened.
What had she done back there with the legionnaires? How had she called Oma then?
I’m afraid, she realized. Back then, I wasn’t afraid.
Fear. Fear of death, fear of life, fear of failure, fear of succeeding. Bundles of fear that knotted her insides and tore at her guts. Kept her wound tight, closed off.
She took a breath. Then another. Only fools didn’t feel fear, that’s what Ora Dasai had always taught. But that wasn’t true. Heroes felt fear. Villains did not. She was always afraid to let it go, because if the fear went, so did everything else.
She remembered the burning legion.
She let go.
Opened her eyes.
The braids of Oma’s breath were suddenly clearer. It wasn’t mist, but intricately bound symbols. They were trefoils with long, curled tails. The tails bound them together.
Lilia took a deep breath. Her lungs opened. Her skin burned. She focused her power on the delicate end of one of the trefoils, and pushed.
Something pushed back.
Lilia gasped.
Great, clawing figures of trefoil-bound mist gathered her up. Pulled her from the ground. Yanked her forward.
Lilia rushed into the air. She dangled eight stories high, propelled to the top of the mirror. The body there had come alive. It was more a torso, really, with stumps for arms and sightless eyes. Weeping thyme sprouted from the eye sockets, covering the cheeks of the face.
Lilia recoiled. But she was bound tightly from head to foot in Oma’s breath. She looked down. A mistake. The height was dizzying. She had fallen from this height once already. Fear riddled her. Oma, she could not fall again. She was already so broken
.
The body that was – or had once been – her mother lurched toward her as far as her buried torso would allow. Her mother opened her mouth, and made strange garbling sounds. Her tongue was gone.
Tears streamed down Lilia’s cheeks. She knew, then, why her mother pushed her through the gate so many years ago. This is what the Kai meant to do to Lilia.
“I promised I’d find you,” Lilia said. “And I did. But you opened a gate for them. I have to close it.”
Her mother sank back toward the edge of the mirror. Lilia watched the ropey bands of power pulse and shimmer. Her mother cocked her head. She wasn’t sure how much of her mother was in there, or if the Kai had truly made her into something else.
“The trefoil,” Lilia said. “I can break it, but you have to let me.”
Lilia saw the bands of power begin to grow more sluggish. Her mother grunted. Spasmed.
“Let me go!” Lilia said. “Let me go so I can –”
The breath holding her aloft was suddenly gone.
Lilia fell.
She gasped – air and the breath of Oma, one breath. She envisioned the trefoil with the long tail. She had half a breath to choose – break her fall, or break the mirror? She chose. Lilia pushed her hands forward. She recited the Song of Unmaking, and directed the surge at the apex of the mirror. At her mother.
Her mother screamed. The bloody red mist around the mirror’s edge evaporated.
Lilia braced for impact.
She landed in a field of succulents. The broad, slime-filled leaves cushioned her fall. She landed amid a tangle of broken leaves and watery plant matter.
Lilia crawled out of the field and saw the white pillars in front of her. Looked back. The succulents had grown spontaneously, just in time to catch her. Her mother’s final gift.
She gazed up at the mirror. The surface had gone dark. It reflected back the fires of the camp, the flags, and the broken succulents. The infused power that had made it glow was gone. Where her mother had been was a scorched mark at the apex of the mirror.
Lilia heard raised voices behind her; the sounds of a kicked nest swarming. But she walked to the face of the mirror anyway. She stared into her own scarred, grimy face. Her torn tunic, smeared in the guts of succulents. Her matted hair, her forgettable face.
The Mirror Empire Page 46
